The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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NEW YORK, Thursday —Yesterday a great many people, who at one time or another during the past ten years have taken part in Mary Margaret McBride's radio hour, went to Madison Square Garden to celebrate her tenth anniversary on the air. If anyone ever doubted that she has a great radio following, yesterday surely proved that she has. I have seen the Garden filled for important meetings, but never before have I seen it as full as it was yesterday for just one woman and a program of radio interviews.

Miss McBride dedicated the program to the recruiting of women for the armed services, and so each of us who spoke not only brought her our warm greetings and good wishes for many more years on the air, but said a few words which we hoped would be helpful in the recruiting campaign.

In the late afternoon, I went with Justice Justine Wise Polier to see a photographic exhibit, "The Negro in American Life," sponsored by the Council Against Intolerance in America, and shown at the Art of This Century Gallery, 30 West 57th St. Mr. John Becker planned and executed the exhibit, which is remarkably good because it is so simple.

The photographic material and very clear texts are mounted on large cardboard backs and can be easily understood. The whole thing is contained in a comparatively small room.

The cost of each such exhibit is $125, but if they were ever able to do a fairly large number at a time, this cost would be materially lowered, of course. At the present time, there are five of these exhibits being shown in the New York Public schools.

In addition, the exhibit has been shown at the Henry Street Settlement in New York; Groton School, Groton, Mass.; the Cooperating Committee Against Race Discrimination; the New York Metropolitan Council on Fair Employment Practices; the Catholic Inter-Racial Council; the Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians Union, Chapter 31, and some eight other places, both in and out of New York.

In the evening, I went to see the play "The Searching Wind," written by Miss Lillian Hellman, with Cornelia Otis Skinner, Dennis King, Dudley Digges, Barbara O'Neil and Arnold Korff playing the chief parts. The last scene, to me, was the biggest and most moving scene of the play, and I thought Montgomery Clift played it extraordinarily well.

The political parts of the play were painful, because they pointed the usual moral which we like to ignore. We compromise, we hesitate, we do not speak out on our convictions, and the younger generations pay for the lack of vision and courage shown by their elders. Do we learn, I wonder?

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT 1944 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, June 2, 1944

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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